1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward Web site content, and more particularly towards integrating and remixing sponsored media with user-generated content.
2. Art Background
Many online services permit users to generate content, and to include linked, embedded, or uploaded content within the content they generate. For example, online video editing services, such as Jumpcut, allow users to upload, edit, and remix their home video, and to share it with friends on the Internet. Blogging tools, e.g. Yahoo! 360, permit users to share their experiences, thoughts, or proposals by maintaining a web log or blog.
In authoring a blog, many users take advantage of the digital medium by adding media including images, video and audio to the web page. Similarly, users of video editing services are often concerned with supplementing their own video with images or video clips illustrating events or ideas that their video doesn't fully elucidate. Though some video services make other user-generated content available for integration into user creations, this content is unlikely to serve user desires. For instance, much user-generated content is low quality due to lack of professional production equipment or limited access to upload bandwidth. Further access to other user's content rarely solves an authors quest for certain types of media, simply because other users share the author's problem, e.g. lack access to copyrighted events or high-capital image or video acquisition techniques.
To remedy these problems users of blogging tools and video editing services often search for images or video online and included results of their liking in their blogs or videos without much concern for copyright issues. This presents a problem for publishers, as it can incur liability.
In addition, publishers, including Yahoo!, that attempt to monetize traffic must present content viewers with ads sufficiently interesting to those viewers that they click through to the advertiser page, or perform some other conversion event. A classic strategy to achieve such interests is to present ads related to the content presented on the page. However, current content match solutions are imperfect, especially in the video, audio, and image contexts.